Waiters serve early guests at Jordan's Restaurant in the Claremont Hotel.
The Claremont Hotel and Resort is now under new ownership.
Mike Kepka / The Chronicle

Waiters serve early guests at Jordan's Restaurant in the Claremont Hotel.
The Claremont Hotel and Resort is now under new ownership.
Mike Kepka / The Chronicle

Photo: Mike Kepka

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Cocooning at the Claremont Resort / Fine dining, relaxing spa help smooth over bumps in service

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With soaring paneled ceilings, a dark front desk and hushed atmosphere, the lobby of the Claremont Resort & Spa could fit right in among the grand old libraries on the UC Berkeley campus a mile away. Given the time we spent there checking in and out recently, it sure would have been nice if there'd been some books to read.

The blazing white castle, a Bay Area landmark, had tantalized my husband and me -- and no doubt thousands of students over the years -- in our ramen-eating Berkeley days. It radiated serene but unattainable luxury from its hillside perch on the Oakland border. If you can afford a splurge, it turns out, some luxury is attainable. Serenity, however, will depend on the service.

As an adult getaway, the Claremont in part appealed to Ian and me -- and no doubt thousands of Bay Area yuppies over the years -- because it wouldn't require hours of fighting traffic. And though the chic shops and cafes of Rockridge aren't far from the hotel, we wanted to cocoon. So we booked a romance package that included a deluxe bay-view room, Champagne, four- course dinner and room-service breakfast for two.

Our phone reservationist had suggested the room upgrade. "You need to get the right room at a place like the Claremont," he confided. "Otherwise it's just another musty old hotel."

Impressed with his candor, we also took his advice to try to check in before 4 p.m., after giving the front desk advance notice. We planned to lunch at the stylish Paragon Bar & Cafe, indulge in a spa treatment and then hit the room early.

But after arriving at 1:30 p.m., we had to wait at the front desk for 15 minutes before we could make our request. By then, Paragon was nearing the end of lunch hour, so we couldn't linger over our meal of caramelized onion and chard ravioli and spicy chicken.

Instead, we followed the scent of sandalwood and mint down to the softly lit Spa Claremont. There we learned the importance of making appointments in advance. I nabbed the last slot of the day for a mud body wrap ($95), while Ian nixed the only remaining option, 50 minutes in the flotation tank ($85). Back upstairs, we found the clerk had been overly optimistic: A number of housekeeping staff had called in sick, so the "rush" order didn't mean much. He suggested we use the fitness club or one of the pools, but our swimsuits were in bags already squirreled away by a bellhop, and we'd have to walk 100 yards in the rain to get to the club. Instead, we browsed the eclectic lobby shops, nursed a free caffe latte from a sympathetic Paragon barista and gazed at historical photos hanging nearby.

While the Claremont's exterior may be virtually all white, its history, in a word, is colorful. You could even say its past is checkered: One owner won it in a game of checkers at Oakland's Athenian Club in 1906.

The site has long inspired visions of architectural sugarplums. Using his Gold Rush fortune, Bill Thornburg bought part of the old Peralta and Vicente land grants to build an English-style "castle," which burned to the ground in 1901. Checkers-winner Frank Havens and partner "Borax" Smith wanted trains to run into the lobby of their new castle, finished in 1915, but never followed through.

In 1957, Frank Lloyd Wright, a professed fan of the hotel's charm, designed a wedding chapel that looks like an austere carousel and was luckily never built. Young people were fans of the hotel's fire escapes -- three towers with 200-foot-long circular slides -- until anxious management felt compelled to close them in 1979.

The best story involves a University of California student who in 1936 took it upon herself to prove that the Claremont was more than a mile from the Berkeley campus -- and thus allowed to serve alcohol. After discovering that it was in fact a few feet over the imaginary line, she was rewarded with free drinks for life.

By the time we'd digested all this history, we were done with our free drink, and the housekeepers were done with our room. The complimentary Champagne -- ultimately, a bottle of cava, the Spanish version -- wasn't there when we checked in, but at least the bay view was. That had more wow factor than the room -- slightly larger but no more opulent than a nice Westin. (We also peeked into one of the "classic" garret-style rooms -- smaller, but certainly not musty.)

The spa's roomy whirlpool also had a good bay view, though not nearly as close as the ads depict. I discovered one bonus of going late: I could hog the whirlpool and assorted European-style showers. Despite reports of labor unrest at the spa (the hotel and restaurant workers are unionized; the spa staff isn't), there were no pickets, leaflets or hints of employee stress. An equal sense of calm pervaded airy Jordan's restaurant, where a jazz quartet accompanied our expertly presented and prepared seafood and lamb dinners, with delicious, superfluous desserts.

The lavish portions were echoed in our punctually served room-service breakfast the next day. We tried out the small outdoor whirlpool by the health club, where a friendly employee warned that the lap pools might be too warm for a workout. (No worries -- the big meals had sunk our inner Michael Phelps.)

We might have left feeling coddled as well as sated, but a glitch on the bill meant one more visit to the lightly staffed front desk in the now very familiar lobby. Since we were no longer students dreaming of serene luxury, but people paying for it, it was a test of patience we'd rather have skipped.

IF YOU GO

GETTING THERE

The Claremont Resort and Spa's mailing address is 41 Tunnel Road, Berkeley. Its 22 acres lie primarily in Oakland, on the Berkeley border, east of the intersection of Claremont (exit off Highway 24) and Ashby avenues.

DINING

The Paragon Bar & Cafe (510-548-8585) near the hotel entrance offers lunch, dinner and a bar menu (entrees $7 to $16.50), with live music four nights a week and, in good weather, outdoor deck seating. The poolside Bayview Cafe is open only to hotel and fitness club guests, serving light lunch fare ($4.95-$7.50) and cocktails.